Hurricane Irene

So far so good: damage everywhere seems far less than anticipated. The National Weather Service pretty much makes statistical predictions, with words such as "likely" or "60% chance of". Local stations and even national stations, as usual, hype everything, and their motives are clear: get people to think that they have to stay tuned every second lest they miss some critical words that might seal -- or enable them to unseal --  their fate. And of course, people who stay tuned to forecasts also stay tuned to advertisements. (See my blog from Feb. 2010 about Commercialization of Weather Reports.)

Nothing too terrible about all this: the pattern for years has been that every strong storm is a possible "storm-of-the-century." Well, of course, every century has a storm of the century, plus centuries  can, conveniently, be measured from any starting day you wish...

Anyway, I hope that wherever you are you got far less damage than you were warned about, and maybe, even, a little excitement as well.